


Giving is Good (as long as you're getting)

by ShippingEverything



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, F/M, Gifts, Misunderstandings, Sort Of, especially since peter in and of himself is... kind of a spoiler, i dont know what to tag this honestly but, it's a fic about a radio clip so like Minor spoilers ig but Still, kinkshaming, radio abel, zrs7 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 01:19:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19415506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShippingEverything/pseuds/ShippingEverything
Summary: It seems, to Peter at least, that everyone in Abel is suddenly into giving him particularly bizarre gifts.Or: Peter doesn’t listen to the Radio. This is the root of several issues.





	Giving is Good (as long as you're getting)

**Author's Note:**

> alright so this whole fic spiraled from a single s7 radio clip (clip 66) where amelia and janine are answering questions together to show Abel-Canton cooperation and they get a question about Valmont and Janine starts needling at Amelia’s hatred of him/curtness/etc and amelia says:
>
>> Oh, I can think of much better gossip about old lovers, Janine. Tell me, did our dear Simon-slash-Peter ever tell you about his Spice Girls fetish? Or his involuntary interest in catholic churches? The particular thing he likes to do with tea cozies? He’s always so eager to impress you, I bet he hasn’t confessed half the things he got up to with me.  
> 
> 
> so uh yeah thats where we're at. sorry, as always, for any Particularly weird americanisms. title from the Spice Girl's _Who Do You Think You Are_
> 
> please enjoy!

It starts with a tea cozy.

Actually it starts with _thirteen_ tea cozies, given to him by the other runners.

“Is this your way of asking me to have tea with you?” Peter asks, absolutely baffled, after Five gives him a third in as many days. Five just laughs and signs an emphatic “ **No, not at all, but we can have tea if you want** ,” that leaves Peter more confused than before.

Tea cozies, he knows, have been brought in before so they could be dismantled for their fabric parts, but it suddenly seems like everyone and their mother is either asking him if he wants them to get him a tea cozy or pulling one out of thin air to give to him.

“Hey, would you happen to know,” Peter asks, sidling up to Jody in the rec room, “Why people keep giving me tea cozies?”

Jody turns to him with a scowl so dark and fierce that Peter recoils a bit -- he’s not at all ashamed to admit it, because he's learned that a small fear of Abel's smallest runner is healthy to have.

“I _don't want to talk about it_ , and I’d like to make it clear that if _another person_ asks me to knit you a bloody _tea cozy_ then I’ll put my needles through their hands!” She hisses, sending venomous looks to the eavesdroppers about the room. “You’re basically my _brother-in-law_ for god's sakes!”

“Uh, alright,” Peter says after a moment of letting Jody breathe heavily. “I totally get that… _sis_. But I still don't understand _why_ people are asking you about tea cozies-”

Jody stands abruptly and storms out of the rec room, to the amusement of the assorted assembled busybodies.

Peter sighs deeply. “I don’t suppose any of _you_ want to tell me what’s going on?”

He takes their laughter as a “no.”

* * *

Peter isn’t sure why, but he’s almost certain that he's heard more Spice Girls in the past week than he has since Apocalypse started.

"Did a runner find a Spice Girls Greatest Hits CD or something? Are you being possessed by the zombie ghost of Baby Spice?” Peter asks the Radio crew in the mess hall one morning.

“Is she your favorite?” Zoe asks instead of answering, something darker than curiosity in her voice.

“No, I've always been partial to Posh Spice, actually. All that severity, you know, much more my type of thing.”

“Oh, we most _certainly_ know,” Zoe says, and Phil chokes on his coffee.

" _Zoe_ ," He gasps after he's finished coughing himself half to death, sounding scandalized for a reason beyond Peter. He and Janine were a badly kept secret _before_ he went and got himself fried to death; now, Five’s made him a shirt that says _First Gentleman_ and Rajit straight up gave his bunk away because he never uses it anymore.

Peter waves off Phil’s outrage and Zoe’s glee. “No need to worry about my honor, Phil, I don’t get embarrassed easily.”

“I’m _well aware_ of that,” Phil mumbles into his mug, which sends Zoe off on a new round of cackles. Peter thinks it’s weird, but he shrugs it off. _Everyone_ knows you’ve got to be a bit odd to agree to do radio in the apocalypse.

* * *

Peter starts to get suspicious when he's given a communion chalice.

Like, okay, the rest of the stuff was weird, and he’s already been given a rosary and two shards of stained glass this month, but it’s when he has the uncomfortable weight of a legitimate communion chalice in his hand, given by an overly eager runner that Peter doesn’t even _recognize_ , that Peter begins to think _Hey, maybe all this weird stuff is connected_.

“Thank you, I guess, but I’m not exactly _practicing_ at the moment,” Peter explains, handing the gaudy cup back to the runner, with a grimace. “The multi-faith gathering space would probably get more use out of this than me.”

The runner frowns but takes it back, muttering an apology. As they rush back to their unsubtly lurking friend, he hears them say, “He didn’t even _want_ it.”

“I _told you_ ,” The friend replies, “It had to be something from the _church_. Amelia said he liked _churches_ , not Catholicism as a whole.”

 _Oh, well, of course it’s Amelia’s doing_ , Peter thinks, furrowing his brows, _But why would she be talking about me and_ churches _?_

* * *

In the end, Peter just asks Janine, “Hey, have you heard anything weird from Amelia lately?”

 _Really_ , He thinks, _I should’ve just done this in the first place. There’s not a thing in Abel that Janine doesn’t know about_.

Except that when he looks over at Janine, her lips are pursed with a nervous tilt and she’s _blushing_ , of all things.

“I had hoped that we could _not_ talk about this for a bit longer, but I suppose it was only a matter of time,” Janine says, after far too long a pause, “Honestly, I’m relieved. I don’t want you to think that you can’t confide in me about things that you’d enjoy for our relationship, and though I can’t promise that I’m as interested in all of them as you are-”

“As much as I’d love to let you continue, and I really would, you’re doing a thing with your nose that’s just adorable,” Peter says, deftly cutting Janine off _and_ changing her expression from distressed resignation to a more manageable annoyance in one fell swoop, “I have literally no idea what you’re talking about. I just heard that Amelia said something about me and churches? And between that and all the weird things I’ve been getting from pretty much everyone, I figured I should at least _ask_ what Amelia’s been telling people.”

Janine frowns, though she looks more confused than upset. “You didn’t hear Amelia and I on the Radio?”

“I was out that day, on a run for Lobatse, I think, and I don’t get the Radio piped in during missions anymore. The music distracts me,” Peter explains, which is not _exactly_ the same as saying _“One time I started singing to a song they played and attracted a group of zoms so now Sam won’t let me listen to the Radio during missions,”_ but is close enough that Peter thinks it’s okay.

Janine’s expression becomes even more longsuffering at that, as though he’s placed a weight on her shoulders. She sighs deeply before saying, “I was, as Mr. Yao put it, _teasing_ Amelia about Valmont and she made some comments about your time together that may have… jump-started all this nonsense.”

“Such as?”

“She said that...” Janine pauses, takes another deep breath, then does the distressed-resignation-nose-crinkle again and continues quickly, “She spoke about a few of your more eccentric sexual interests. I didn’t stop her, and for that I apologize, but I was merely shocked by everything she said.”

Peter makes a confused noise, “Surely she can’t have said anything _that_ shocking. We’ve all but gone down a fetish checklist at this point, Jenny.”

“Yes, but I certainly couldn’t expect the _Spice Girls_ to be on yours.”

“What?” Peter coughs, eyes widening. Janine shrugs back at him in a _You tell me!_ way, but he’s still reeling, “The _Spice Girls_? I mean, I can’t say I never had them in _mind_ at private times when I was younger, they were _quite_ fit and often wore very little clothing, but I don’t have a _fetish_ for them.”

“You don’t?”

“Absolutely not.”

Janine frowns again, “What about tea cozies? Do you like to use them sexually?”

Peter splutters, “No! What would I even _do_ with that?”

“I don’t know! Amelia just _said_ -” Janine cuts herself off, scowling. “ _Amelia_ said, after I embarrassed her on air. It is obvious, in retrospect, that I should’ve been more critical of her comments.”

“Right. Let’s just agree to talk to each other next time, alright?” Peter offers, still grimacing about the _tea cozies_ he’d gotten, all of which he would have to _very publicly_ burn now, and what people might think he was doing with them. “Is that all she said, Spice Girls and tea cozies?”

“And churches,” Janine adds, waving a hand dismissively, “She said you had an ‘involuntary interest’ in Catholic churches.”

“Oh.” Peter says. He thinks about it for a second, imagining a church not unlike his childhood parish in his mind. He imagines being in the church, going to the pulpit, to the altar, to the confessional.

He imagines being there with _Janine_.

He clears his throat, purposefully averting his eyes from Janine’s.

“Growing up the way I did, what with the whole _hell complex_ , I can’t say I _didn’t_ have the odd church sex dream, and, really, I think it might just be a growing-up-Catholic thing because-”

Janine laughs and Peter abandons his explanation to listen to the sound. She shakes her head at him, and probably this entire situation. “Luckily for you, that’s the one that I was most comfortable with to start. I do, however, draw the line at wearing a habit.”

Peter grins. “I can work with that.”

**Author's Note:**

> The people giving Peter gifts are divided into three groups: people making fun of him (Zoe), people trying to court him (the runner from the church section), and people just trying to be helpful and supportive (most everyone else). I’m not entirely sure which group I was aiming for Five to be a part of in that first section but honestly it's probably all three.
> 
> i wrote this whole thing in one sitting, as i've found that's the most effective way to make sure that i actually finish a zr fic in a reasonable time *looks longingly at the jamie/archie fic that's wasting away in my drafts* so uh if there's anything weird in here then... sorry.
> 
> thank you so so much for reading and i hope you liked it! comments, kudos, and bookmarks fill my heart
> 
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